HS2 just another gravy train

Blue smoke reality - Mallard

Blue sky rhetoric - HS2

The last two days had me observing how London coped with the aftermath of the overnight St Jude storm. Despite the weather warnings conditions had not seemed too severe, certainly not compared to some of the storms we have endured in Scotland over the past three winters. True there were a few trees down along the roads but by 9am the Council workmen were chainsawing and removing the storm damage. Buses and tubes were running normally and the only impact as we caught a tube into London at 9:30am was that the peak hour commuters had delayed their journeys.

The journey home by train the next day was more difficult with two days' passengers squeezing into the trains following the cancellation of all trains on Monday. East Coast managed it well, they honoured all tickets and provided some compensation for those unable to find seats. I wish that Scotrail could have done the same but the passengers with reserved seats for their onward journey from Edinburgh were told that they would have to buy new tickets. Shame on Scotrail and other operators who scammed the travelling public; the disgrace of rail ticketing is a perpetual reminder of the inequities of rail privatisation. East Coast is a state operator brought in to run the East Coast mainline after the collapse of two private operators. It is the best-performing rail operator in recent passenger surveys, which perhaps explains why the coalition wants to sell it off. We can't have publicly owned companies providing efficient services, fairer prices and showing the private companies how things should be done!

When I arrived home the debate about HS2 was ignited again. The government had reconsidered its analysis of the economic case after much critical comment. They accepted that people did work on trains and that the economic benefits were not as great as the consultants KPMG had originally suggested. The increase in costs to £50bn, including rolling stock, would enable phase 1 to be completed from London to Birmingham by 2026. Against this cost, the economic benefits have been estimated at £15bn. but this still includes some highly dubious assumptions.

The understandable criticism of the escalating cost of HS2 by environmentalists and knowledgeable rail managers has now been joined by many of the travelling public and the more discerning MPs. Starting the project from London just reinforces the primacy of London as the economic epicentre of the UK. Even if things go well and Phase 2 at an additional cost yet to be estimated gets the go-ahead as far as Manchester and Leeds it will be 2033.  All places north of here including Scotland will have to wait even further into the future. The South West, Wales and East Anglia are simply calculated to lose out if HS2 proceeds.

The minister was despatched to Sheffield to bang the drum about how the north would benefit from HS2. What a joke. I made some calculations from my recent trip to London. It had taken 5 hours and 20 minutes for the 428 miles from Scotland. But what a difference between the time taken to get from London to York and that from York to Scotland. The average speed from London to York is 97mph, and the average speed from York to Scotland is a mere 71mph, a significant 38 minutes longer than it would have taken if the same speed had been maintained. This includes three stops so the gain could be more like half an hour.

So why start HS2 at the London end? If we want shorter travel times and the associated economic growth surely it should start on the tracks less speedy; that would make all the difference. The rail links between the former great 'industrial cities' of Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh are notoriously slow. Make rail investment on these lines and the benefits could be huge, taking up to 25% off existing times. Instead of shaving the odd few minutes off the London to Birmingham line through HS2, it would be far more effective to invest in new motive power, more comfortable rolling stock, quadrupling tracks at pinch points to increase capacity and improving the signalling and maintenance of the existing lines.

The games played by the HS2 lobbyists are a reprise of what we witnessed with all the new financial products a decade ago. It was a ploy to divert people's savings and pensions into the pockets of rogue financial and property service advisers. Similarly promises for faster trains in twenty years will reap rich rewards in the meantime for the financiers and construction cartels promoting HS2. The landowners of the Home Counties and Cheshire will benefit too unless the government cave in to the campaigns for tunnelling through the Chiltern chalk lands. Gullible government ministers have been briefed into believing that they are the true visionaries. The disappointment will be reserved for the potential customers who will pick up the tab through taxation to pay for the folly of HS2 which, even if on time, will not make much impact north of Birmingham until 2033 at the earliest.

The missing question in all of this is why are we not seeking to create a more decentralised United Kingdom instead of pandering to the obsession of the London establishment to feather their own nest. It was no surprise today to read that spending on the arts is £69 per head in London compared to just £4.60 per head for the rest of England. Even this ratio of 15:1 in favour of London sounds generous to the rest of the country compared to the effect of HS2.

International research shows that countries with a high primacy of the largest city such as London, Paris, Mexico City and Bangkok create far greater inequalities than in countries like Germany where there is a more polycentric and decentralised distribution of population. Cities in Germany are far more equal in size and the cities of Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf and Koln are all growing faster than Berlin. This has helped produce a far better performance in the growth of its economy than the standstill that we have endured in the rest of the UK whilst London has been hell-bent on becoming a world city and soaking up resources that could be more effectively spent in the regions.

We could and should be investing to improve the rail network, the rolling stock and timetabling of trains.  If the proposed HS2 investment were switched to the other regions the dividends might even occur in the lifetime of present customers. No doubt our MPs will be whipped into line to perpetuate the obsessive focus on the primacy of London. As a white elephant, HS2 will provide years of work and bonuses for the bankers and construction companies, lots more work for the consultancies and marketing professions and maybe a few Board seats for ministers and MPs. They are all travelling first class on the HS2 gravy train whilst the public is being sold a white elephant. 

HS2 is the lovechild of Capitalism and Capitolism